


can you drown me?

by regionalsky



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: 15/16 year olds, A lot of backstory, Alcohol, Cute at some parts, Drinking, Fic, Fluff, I hate writing female characters so there are none oops, I promise this isn't cliche as fuck, M/M, No Phun Intended, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), Present and past tense, Smoking, Sorry Not Sorry, Suicide, Summer Camp, Swearing, Weed, a shit ton of dialogue, and suicide reference, but at other times its highkey dark, but you don't actually see that, close emotional relationship, drown fic, generally cannon, it just shapes the story, joshler - Freeform, like actually it's not just every other summer camp story, mutual dependence, no self harm but references, not cliche, not many trigger warnings but self harm references, read the dates in the titles, the ocs aren't a huge annoying part of the story they just help, the summer camp is cool, third person, this is weird and complicated but I promise I thought all of this out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-10-24 09:26:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10738860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regionalsky/pseuds/regionalsky
Summary: crazy how a summer camp can fuck so many things up- unless they were already fucked up, and it took a month to realize that.tyler can't deal with it by himself. and josh isn't there to help anymore, not because he's dead, and somehow that hurts even more than if he were.(drown fic)





	1. October 13, 2016: unbreakable (?)

**Author's Note:**

> this is going to be dark. the first chapter is darker than the rest of it will be, and it's just a teaser. an idea. so i hold myself to writing the rest of this. if you like my other fic, lose your mind, this will be similar.  
> hold on, these chapters take a while to write but I promise I am doing it.

Tyler held the sweatshirt in his arms. The frigid air almost burned his skin, it hurt, but it was nothing compared to rest of the storm in his head.  
He glanced at it once, then placed the red sweatshirt on the dead grass. The wind whipped the stiff, yellow stalks against his bare legs, but he didn’t care. No one would care. Waves pounded against the rocks below him, screaming their anger into the solid wall they couldn’t break, no matter how hard they hit it. Tyler smiled empathetically; he knew how it felt, when nothing would move.  
He was trying one more thing. Scaring himself. It was time to feel some emotion, open his mind to the wind. Blow out some dead leaves, some congestion, allow him to breathe. Reset. Off and on again. The lake, it moved and swirled and he watched it, he stared at it, he took the freezing water and ached to feel something other than this bleak softness taking up every inch of his mind.  
Disappointment dawned on him. What he was doing, it should have made him think. Feel. Even the cold, just the thought of the cold should have shaken him awake.  
A tear slipped out of the corner of his right eye- there, that was cold. Not as cold as he could be, not as cold as the water was.  
He looked away, no, he wouldn’t do that. Wasn’t fair to the people around him- but why were other people allowed to do this, and not him? He shook his head. No, because he was stronger. Maybe?  
Because of that camp, he was strong. Unbreakable. He stepped off the bench, away from the drop. He was untouchable. He had lived through this much, fought this hard, there was no reason to give up now.  
Tyler left the red sweatshirt in the grass, there was no chance he would ever touch it again. Not when he could leave it behind. Leave him behind. It had been two years.  
When Tyler was safely in the car- a seatbelt over his chest, his still bare chest, he looked at his phone.  
One (1) Missed call from: Josh  
His arms were covered with scratches, even though only his legs were whipped by the grass, when he got home. It was 3.


	2. do shrinks not drugs, kids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyler is with Dr.Olson.  
> Tyler writes too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is to help build up for the backstory.  
> this is also what I write as a warmup for lose your mind, because that takes some serious mind-setting.  
> enjoy?

It was all in capital letters, in angry pen scribbled across the page. 

Written in rage, the words were a lifeline, an almost hopeless rope thrown out of the pit slowly filling with rainwater. 

 

I get a certain satisfaction from seeing tracks from the sky when I’m on an airplane.

I get a certain satisfaction from knowing I made someone subtly, but noticeably, happier. 

I get a certain satisfaction from doing something I’ve longed to do for years but never had the courage.

I get a certain satisfaction from filling every page of my notebook with black ink words written in different handwriting.

I get a certain satisfaction from sucking a lollipop long enough that the tootsie-roll center peeks through.

 

There's something about writing the little things down, like a middle aged woman on pinterest. Writing little things I like. Fill sections of a notebook, one that no one will ever see.

 

Well, he saw my blue one. That one’s dead now- dirty, contaminated, untouchable.

I said he could look at it. In the back. A mood chart. Drawn with the same pen, but with much neater lines.

 

Then he started flipping.

 

He, of course, asked me if it was okay. I didn’t want to explain why it wasn’t. That was his problem. There had to be a reason for everything, a diagnosis, and some way to fix it. I didn’t want him to touch it. It could have burst in to flames, it should have. 

 

The notebook was in his hands anyways. He read through the deepest parts of my mind.

 

I was frozen with a smile, a slight, vacant smile. He read and read forever, raising his eyebrows and making other little facial expressions that made me want to cringe out of my own skin.

He got to the part,  _ the  _ part. About the night.

The whisper-soft grass, the angry wind. The foaming lake lapping hungrily at the rocks, the sweatshirt dying to leap from my fingers. The rain. The car. The phone call.

 

I closed my eyes as he cleared his throat. Closed the blue cover, and set it on top of some of his files. Inside, I screamed. You touched it, I yelled. You touched it and looked at it and read it and read me, and now you’re looking at me as if I’m lost and you know everything about it. 

 

No one was supposed to know. Confused and scared in my mind; my headspace is only fixed on one thing, on not letting on how fucked up things could be. The show must go on, to be cliche, the show must go on. Even if the main actor forgets their lines, and the plot, and the name of the play. 

 

He had it with him, on him half of the room. The dragon’s nest. I was already in enemy territory, with the psychology weekly magazines stacked up neatly on the table and the water jug and the teabags that bled red and smelled of cinnamon, he smelled of cinnamon. 

 

That office tasted of sweet, though. The sickly sweet taste of old memories, of fear.

 

He asked questions. I nodded. My eyes flitted to the notebook. When was he going to give it back? Would he ever?

 

His hands were folded in his lap, on top of a grey knit sweater. Dirty hands. Dirty, dirty hands that had touched my world. 

 

Maybe he noticed I wasn’t responding. Maybe he realized he did what he wasn’t supposed to do. 

 

I mean, it wasn’t abuse. He hadn’t touched me. I didn’t think he would. Just the stories I had read and the videos I had seen, kids obsessed with the idea of it always put the thought into my head.

  
  


“Tyler, is something wrong?”

I nodded, then caught myself and shook my head.

“No.”

I could feel my phone buzzing in my pocket. There was no question about who it was.

“Can you tell me about the… the description of the lake?”

I shrugged. “There’s a lot of lakes in there.”

He reached his hands, his claws, towards the blue cover. “No, Tyler, I mean the ‘whisper soft grass’ lake, the one with the sweatshirt…”

I shook my head. “I dunno what you’re talking about.”

“Tyler-”

I stood up. “I’m going to the bathroom.” He nodded and sighed. 

“Be back in a minute?”

My phone, it was a call from you. It was time to go. Leaving.

I walked out the door, and there you were. In the car. For the first time in a year. Your jaw was stronger, your lips were fuller. You pretended not to notice me until I reached the car.  

“Hey, Tyler.”

I smiled, I cracked, I smiled. “Hey Josh.”


	3. lying makes the world go 'round (it never does seem to catch up with you)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a fair amount of the past summed up in one chapter. the first year of camp. up to feb of freshman year.  
> tyler is a confused kid who's trying to learn how to fit in. he figures it out, and it works a little too well.   
> josh appears out of this air and can't figure out how to disappear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp this took forever for me to write because I couldn't decide if I hated it enough to delete it or obsessed over it enough to actually finish it. it's not done, but I have ideas. I had to figure out if I should summarize the first year of camp or no. I thought this was better. I'm trying to make these characters important.  
> I promise this isn't cliche.
> 
> (also I hope you notice the stay in place(sing a chorus) reference(s))

In 8th grade, he had one mantra. 

Fight back. Fight back. He wanted it out of his head. 

No, it wasn’t real, because these things didn’t happen to kids and thinking about it would make it worse. The winter would melt and summer would fix it, summer would rebuild and he just had to  _ not think about it  _ and the world would be fine. It was a new school new name new face everything after the summer, he could recreate and all he had to do was become partially okay again over the summer. Partially okay.

He didn’t even really know what was wrong; a gear had sprung loose the year before and he left it there, causing damage and corruption in the back of his mind, growing and infecting until it blew up. The machine that drove him.

He told no one, and the ones who cared didn’t notice. The ones he depended on to not be lonely, to have some conversation and to feel popular, they treated him the same but he came to realize how distant they really were.

And they were, he had grown up with these kids and yeah they were “friends” but when they laughed and he laughed it wasn’t what he needed, it wasn’t being understood. It wasn’t someone really knowing him. It was people who thought he was funny and smart.

Those close friends, the real ones, he fought tooth and nail to hide it. He was fine. He was fine. He was fine fine fine fine fine and good at hiding it, good at being cliche and burying everything wrong deep within his mind. They left, not on purpose, and he didn’t shove them away on purpose. But they couldn’t know because he didn’t want to deal with the repercussions.

He promised that summer would be good, that summer would solve things. He would leave home and then come back to a new universe. High school.

 

Summer came and he waited in agony for this camp, this camp he signed up for back in January when he thought it was his only way out. His parents finally drove him to the state over, to the mountains and where he thought he could hide. 

 

Cliche. He had read too many things, anyways, about summer camps fixing people.

 

The first night, he was happy. He told a lot of lies.

 

The second night, he tried to expand the fake world he told them, and found it worked. He wove a web, a story, another life he lived within this camp.

 

The third night, he transformed from being lost and confused into a person who had done things kids his age barely dreamed of.

 

The first weekend, he realized he didn’t need kids his age and started talking to the older kids more. He had a reputation and slid into the group with no more than a few conversations.

 

The second monday, he had his first taste of alcohol other than taking a sip of his parents’ red wine at the dinner table. 

 

The second wednesday, in a smoke filled cabin, he realized girls liked the stories he told. He didn’t know where the came from or how he made them up, only that people loved them.

 

The second friday, he learned what it was like to be wasted around people who weren’t supposed to know. He stumbled in to his cabin, certain the counselors knew everything, and told them he had come from the bathroom. He was good at stories, so he lay panting on the bed and fluttering his eyes minutes later with no second comment from them.

 

That saturday, he learned what it was like to be hungover and be on kitchen duty.

 

Days later, because he had lost track of the date, he told so many lies that he found himself naked in a bed before he was ready to be but no way to turn back. He told himself he enjoyed it.

 

Even weeks later, the muted partying never got boring. He lived for the attention, he lived for the show. He knew when he got home, things would be different.

 

On the first day of school, no one recognized him. They had known him as loud but innocent, a leader but someone who didn’t question authority. 

He showed up tan and fit from days of backpacking and riding and a few inches to his height, a wider smile and an overwhelming aura about him. Confidence. 

The stories he told them about camp, they were all true. Not lies this time, although he was good at those. 

These people pulled him into their group, he was back at it again. Up on top, but it wasn’t muted partying on dwindling supplies knowing they’d have to go back to a cabin full of other kids and wake up for a 4 day backpack the next day. No no no no, it was drinking like there was no tomorrow, because school didn’t matter. It didn’t.

 

Nothing seemed out of control until he found himself in the ER, a doctor asking him questions with police standing behind her. No he didn't know where he was or where he had come from he hadn't been drinking with anyone else (although he very clearly had been) he was alone and no he hadn't been drinking and if he had been it was his first time he didn't know where he got it from and yes he was sorry very very sorry and here's your court date. 

When he woke up after that, they explained things a little better. It was the worst hangover he had ever had, his mouth was a desert. He couldn't smile. Hickeys from people he didn't remember traced his neck and hips and he didn't have underwear on. He was drugged, they told him, best case scenario was that it wasn't his fault. Alcohol poisoning. Luck to be alive blah blah blah so in a new suit and a well rehearsed plea he went to the courthouse down the road. 

 MIP. He was fine, physically fine, all except for the MIP. Done. Gone. He was gone. All chances of scholarship were gone.

Stupid stupid stupid and over Christmas he descended into a level of self hate he didn’t know existed, he didn't know what to do with himself. He couldn’t party, he couldn’t hang out, he couldn’t tell stories so he was back to the bottom. Again. They left because he wasn’t the boy that went to camp, he was the lame ass kid from 8th grade but somehow even worse. They were old, anyways, didn’t need to be fucking with freshmen. He was sober. 

 

Then a boy. A boy talked to him, ignored the dark ringed eyes and everything he had heard, and this boy talked to him. He had a stupid name and Tyler, Tyler had barely ever heard of him before. Josh. Tyler sneered at him, he was above this weirdass kid. A peasant talking to a king. No point, but then again, Tyler was pretty alone.

 

Josh pushed. He knew all of Tyler’s hiding spots. He didn’t let up. Tyler found himself talking to him. Tyler's mom liked Josh, albeit the weird cut of his dark brown hair and the weird scars on his biceps and neck. Josh was fucking weird but Tyler was even more outcast so here he was, self proclaimed druggie who had been to court by the age of 15 and just trying to be alone.

 

“The rain,” Josh said. 

Tyler nodded. There wasn’t much else to say, other than to tell Josh to fuck off. He pulled his laptop out of his bag and set it on his desk. Josh continued to stare out the window.

Tyler had one earbud in his ear, and the other one played loud music Josh could hear from across the room. He picked at a loose thread in his jeans and ignored the fact that he also had homework.

 

“You know, I really think you shouldn’t go back,” Josh said, a few minutes later.

“What do you mean?” Tyler grumbled, not looking up from his computer, but pulling the earbud out.

“Camp.” Josh turned his wide eyes on Tyler. “You are going back?”

“None of your fucking shit. You shouldn’t care.” Tyler put the earbud back in and turned up the music.

“I don’t. I just personally wouldn’t go back if I were you,”

Tyler sighed and glared at Josh. “And why not?”

“Like,” He paused, jumping down from the windowsill he had been perched on, “you did, like, get fucked in the head there. No offense.”

Ignoring Josh’s blunt answer, Tyler capped and uncapped a sharpie.“I can’t not go back.”

“Why not?” Josh slid on to the desk, forcing Tyler to look up. “You don’t have to.”

“I promised I would come back,” He said, drawing something on the webbing inbetween his index and middle finger.

“Yeah but you also promised you would keep in touch,” Josh cocked his head, “and did you?”’

“I dunno,” Tyler mumbled. “That’s why you go back,”

“But not to get in to drinking again? You’re doing pretty well,”

“How do you know I wasn’t drunk last night?” Tyler snapped, looking back down at the laptop. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your hands aren’t shaking and you’re less pissed off. You aren’t hungover.”

Tyler grunted.

Josh turned back to look at the rain pattering against the window. Tyler had refused to turn on the lights, so the room was flat and grey. His damp shoes were downstairs, placed softly next to Tyler’s soaking wet ones, but his wet socks left marks in the carpet. His backpack was downstairs as well; he only held a calculator in his hands.

“Wanna dye your hair?” Josh asked, ignoring Tyler’s eye roll. “You’ve been talking about that for a while.”

“We were gonna do that at camp. Not with you.”

“Why not me? And what color did you end up getting?”

“Look, Josh,” Tyler shut his computer. “I’m not sure why you’re still here. I didn’t ask you to be. I don’t really want to talk to you.”

“I think you want to talk to someone and I’m the only person who will,” Josh said, pulling the case off the calculator. 

Tyler ignored him, typing an essay for Spanish that he could do in his sleep. Josh pounded keys on the calculator, graphing random polar equations and occasionally sighing in frustration.

It was February.


End file.
